5 Must-Have Features for Your B2B Web-to-Print Storefront

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This post originally appeared on the XMPie site. It’s republished here with permission.
Today, if you don’t have a web-to-print (W2P) solution you may be missing out on valuable business opportunities. In this digital world, convenience is key – and a Web-to-Print Storefront can provide the convenience and efficiencies your business needs and your customers want.
But B2B Web-to-print storefronts require different feature sets to those set up for B2C opportunities.  In this two-part series, we’ll take a look at which features sets are required for each option.
In the B2B space, you can create private Web-to-print storefronts for your business customers’ employees to order products 24/7 to support their day to day activities, from marketing materials to business cards, and process and fulfill their orders more efficiently.
Here are the top 5 features to look for in your solution:

  1. Integration with Current Business Processes

Your Web-to-Print Storefront should easily integrate with your businesses processes to ensure there are no hiccups in your workflow. If anything, you’ll likely streamline more than a few manual tasks! The solution should be able to weave in seamlessly with your MIS system and offer a variety of key capabilities such as multi-level approval options, single sign-on user authentication, recipient list upload, split-shipping and the ability to bill using different methods including credit cards, purchase orders and budget centers.

XMPie customer, Hemlock, used XMPie’s PersonalEffect StoreFlow Pro to build a B2B web-to-print storefront with hundreds of products, multiple integration points to third-party systems, and advanced credit card handling for a major Canadian utility company.  You can read the case study here.

  1. Easy Setup and Maintenance

Creating each storefront shouldn’t be a hassle. Look for a solution that has a user-friendly dashboard so you can easily set up and manage each store. With XMPie StoreFlow you’ll step through a few set-up tabs to define basic store information to get your store online quickly. From there, you can define the parameters for product catalogs and user profiles.

  1. Matching the Brand Style

Branding is everything and creating a familiar e-commerce experience for your customers is key. Look for capabilities that allow you to control each store’s skin to mimic the look and feel to match the brand standards. This way, the customer’s end-users will feel more comfortable to use the portal.

CTP Digital used XMPie StoreFlow to do just that.  They won new projects from both existing and new clients to survive in this new era for print providers.  They were able to prove to their B2B clients that CTP Digital was the print provider to turn to for all print communications – and especially when brands needed print on demand.

  1. VDP Capabilities

Variable Data features, that offer the ability to customize a print product to each end-user is a must in any storefront, even if only customizing a simple business card. Make sure that your Web-to-print storefront can support both static AND variable documents to drive a wide variety of printed options.  Ensure that the products on offer completely adhere to the exact branding guidelines, for instance by using the correct Pantone colors. Check that both variable and static pages can be used within the same document, so that you can offer a rich set of products from flyers and brochures, to booklets and more.

Learn how the THP Creative Group transformed its business by shifting strategy towards providing businesses with B2B Web-to-print storefronts for ordering variable products.

  1. Scalability

Every Web-to-print system is different and being able to scale functionality based on current and future needs is important. Two years down the line you may need to bump up capabilities to help you and your business customers meet growing requirements, so a scalable solution is key.

XMPie customer Ditto Documents took the initiative to find a solution to problems that B2B customers didn’t even recognize they had. Because StoreFlow is part of the XMPie platform, Ditto Documents could offer its clients turnkey web-to-print solutions to suit each particular business challenge.

Make sure that your web-to-print storefront supports both static and variable documents to drive a wide variety of printed options. Find more W2P storefront tips.

Want to learn more about XMPie’s B2B Web-to-print capabilities? Drop us a note below!

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